Harris Mayer
| Harris Mayer | |
|---|---|
| Born | Harris Mayer 1921 |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Physics, Mathematics |
Harris L. Mayer (born 1921) is an American physicist known for his collaboration with Edward Teller and John von Neumann. He worked on the Manhattan Project. Mayer also worked on Project Orion. His work had to do with opacity, mostly in the context of atmospheric opacity to nuclear radiation.
In late 1945, Harris Mayer was a student of Maria Goeppert-Mayer (wife of chemist Joseph Edward Mayer and neither of whom had any relation to Harris). Edward Teller invited Maria Goeppert-Mayer and two of her students (Boris Jacobsohn and Harris Mayer) to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mayer's early work at the lab had to do with the development of the thermonuclear bomb. The bomb was not a part of the main mission of the Los Alamos Lab, but volunteers among the scientists became involved. Mayer wrote a history of the lab in this era where he describes his contribution as the calculations of the equations of state and radiative transfer opacities.
The problem of opacity in the bomb was based on a concern that low opacity will allow radiation to escape rapidly giving the bomb less energy and a slower buildup of pressure during the explosion. This, "low opacity" would mean a more efficient bomb. While this did not greatly matter in fission bombs, it was very important in connection with hydrogen bombs where the transfer of energy between the fission and fusion devises is important. Teller presented the idea that the absorption of radiation was different at high and low frequencies, at high frequencies all frequencies are absorbed, but at lower frequencies absorption occurs more specifically at specific lines and allows more energy transfer, and Mayer carried out many of the related calculations. Opacity is generally calculated based on average opacities using Planck or Rosseland opacity functions. However, these averages generalize many one-electron transitions that can take place in a large number of atomic bound electron configurations. Harris' work was the first to calculate opacity including the full effects of line absorption.
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